(Special Report) - Symantec said it welcomes Microsoft to the consumer security market, but it’s not threatened. As a competitor, it will obviously keep its eyes open, but at this point, Microsoft doesn’t have much leverage in the market, since OneCare products aren’t as user-friendly as Symantec’s products.

For instance, Symantec’s products run in the background and do their job of protecting the user without ever having the user to allow or disallow the access to certain ports or applications. As many of you know, that was the case in the past. You would generally see a security window pop-up if you launched Internet Explorer asking and warning you of the potential threats. Not anymore, says Symantec.

Symantec’s goal is to make it as seamless as possible for consumers to handle security the right way with Symantec products. Of course, if Symantec is doing that automatically and taking the control out of user hands, then troubleshooting may be a problem. For all we know, Symantec might be blocking a perfectly legitimate e-mail attachment from opening without ever letting the user in on the action.